The Holiday Season

Well it was quite the holiday season with Brent and I traveling from coast to coast as usual! We flew from Tampa to Sacramento where we did a massive rendezvous with the 20 people coming into CA to spend the holidays together. My parents and brother were coming in from Australia after my Grandmother's funeral as well as my Aunties Barbara and Diana, their husbands, and four of my cousins. My Auntie Diana and fam had been planning to come for the past year and my Auntie Barb and Uncle Rob decided last minute to come back with my parents, so it was a nice surprise! My sister-in-law and two nieces and my sister Esther drove in from Utah and my Sister Beth, her husband and my new nephew flew in from Texas. When we finally all converged and gathered our luggage, we packed the cars to the brim and drove the long 5 hours to my parents house (they live way far up in the boonies).

I love this photo of frozen juniper berries

We had a blast together, and my Aussie family celebrated their first ever white christmas, they were very excited. We did lots of sledding, snow-man building, ice skating, and bundling up. Brent and I drove to Mt. Shasta the day after Christmas and spent the afternoon snowboarding - good times!

My Uncles Rob & Manuel and cousin Jono enjoying their first white christmas; Brent and I at Burney Falls


Snowboarding at Mount Shasta

We also broke the news to the family that Brent and I are engaged. We have been talking about it for a long time and since we were with everyone we decided to spill the beans in person. Neither of us are into big deal weddings so we generally keep all this stuff low key, so this may be the first you have heard of this! :) We bought a beautiful opal ring and I love it. Opal is my favorite stone and I love having it and a very unique ring too. No date yet, but we are looking at probably sometime in early 2010.


Brent and I in the snow; My pretty ring

It was fun to get together with the family, it had been a few years since my immediate family had all been together so that plus the extra added family made for a fun vacation and good visit!


The girls got matching PJs!


The whole fam damily!

Brent and I then flew out from Reno to Washington DC to spend New Year's Eve with some of our DC friends. We had an initial big bash planned but as life goes, things happened and it got honed down to just Brent, myself and our friend Liz, who we were staying with. We still had a ton of fun though and went to dinner at an all you can eat Tapas restaurant and ate a ton, it was so good! We then went back to Liz's place and watched the ball drop, played trivial pursuit and were all so tired at 12:30 - getting old sucks!


My friend Liz and I


Brent and I got all gussied up!

On the 1st, we went to the Museum of Natural History and enjoyed ourselves there. It was surprising brimming with people, which made Brent and I happy that there are still people out there interested in science and willing to spend their holiday looking at it!
On the 2nd, we took a bus up to New York to visit Brent's Uncle and Cousin for a couple days. We also met up with my Auntie Diana and fam who were thoroughly enjoying New York City for the first time. Brent showed them around Chinatown and Little Italy and we had a great time buying cheap crappy souvenirs and eating expensive (but really good) cannoli.


Hanging with my Auntie and fam in NYC

After our cross-country adventure we flew back to Tampa and are now trying to sort and pack everything for our upcoming move to Australia.
Hope everyone had a good holiday!